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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28101705">Stupid Yearning and Cutting Disappointment</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnoideatime/pseuds/longnoideatime'>longnoideatime</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Andromeda Six (Visual Novel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 12:01:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,227</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28101705</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnoideatime/pseuds/longnoideatime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Vexx and Traveler reflect on their relationship in the past and have an encounter in his cell.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Vexx Serif/Traveler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stupid Yearning and Cutting Disappointment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I might write more later, depending on my fancy, but this is all for now. Didn’t want the “1/?” to get anyone’s hopes too high.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She is the eye of a storm, if that eye was as big as the red-tipped head of a pin. He can see it in his mind’s eye, this one little drop of vibrant red amidst the angry waves of an abyssal black ocean trying to drown him. He tries to balance on it, remain above the waters, but he can feel the knowledge in them, that they all know he will fall. </p>

<p></p><div>
  <p>He pictures her, clinging to memories to stave off the inevitable, sitting again in the window in her room, blue skin softly glowing the way it only seemed to do for him. Like his own private star, her feet tucked beneath her, slim and vulnerable, though not so much as the expression she wore just before he would kiss her. He’d never thought he would be attracted to such an uncertain, honest look, but it was so full of <em>wanting</em> and fear — that he would hurt her, he acknowledged to himself now — that he felt as though she was the first person he’d ever seen when he got too close. He’s fairly well convinced that the little lunar flecks in her eyes could bring greater men to their knees (as he has been). The royal family is not exactly known for being unattractive, and her looks were striking from the moment he saw her photograph, but made realer in person. The Stellar Queen’s cold beauty had been passed down to her almost like it’d been copied and pasted, the mirage broken only by the expressions that softened her face; so few were allowed close enough to see them. The way she tucked her honest smiles into her shoulders, trying to hide them, and went still when she was angry or hurt.</p>
  <p>He’d called her desperate for a friend, easy to manipulate, but in truth it had taken him months to see beyond the unconscious distance she projected, too used to being ignored and discounted to know how to let anyone in. Now when he watches her — with Reznor, something like jealousy but not in his chest, with the others — he wonders how far in he was ever truly allowed. And then she looks at him again. Stars could be jealous of her, unvarying little pinpricks stitched into the sky nothing to the worlds her eyes convey.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>She’s used to anger, used to pain too. She pretended it was a contest when she was younger: how much pain could she withstand without giving away its existence? She learned it from her mother, watching Tajean’s cold imperiousness armour her, insulate her, from being married to a man she hated with every molecule, every particle of her. She learned it from constantly waiting to be something more than a reminder of her father to the Stellar Queen. There was never an answer for either of them, just an ever increasing ceiling of misery. And then there was Vexx. He treated her like she was real; it was so unfamiliar at first she couldn’t help but rebuff him, despite her curiosity growing with each overture he made. Most people didn’t care enough to try to get close to her the first time, much less feel compelled to keep trying despite her awkward coldness.</p>
  <p>He remembers the first time he touched her, how she flinched and he turned away, angry at both of them for the space of that flinch. Himself for overreaching, though he didn’t know if it was personal or professional, and irrationally her for not being ready to be touched by him when there had been something growing between them for months, slithering beneath his skin and infecting his thoughts when he tried to sleep. And then he felt her hands pulling him back to her, the lurch of dropping off a cliff only to be caught. She didn’t close the distance between them despite her tight grip on his sleeves, just looking up at him with her eyes full of desperate meaning; she was always like that, quiet when her vocabulary was bigger than the library she’d built it in. He wasn’t the person she was making him into in that moment, serious and prone to trading longing looks; it shouldn’t have meant anything to always tell her one thing and mean another. <em>She</em> shouldn’t have meant anything, serious and stoic and cold, naive and kind and idealistic. Honest. Nothing like him. But he felt something unfamiliar in his chest he knew even then not to look too closely at, his head dipping towards her of its own volition, body pressing her against the wall. To look at it would’ve been to lose himself in the vastness of space, unfettered and adrift, but unable to do anything to save himself. He was lost long before he realised it, longer before he admitted it. </p>
  <p>Their breath mingled, her heart beating like the hooves of a horse tearing down a track in her chest. She was the one to lean her forehead against his, his eyes closing as the scent of lilies wafted off her hair and surrounded him. Her hands left his arms as he reached for her, his fingers settling loosely on her waist and struggling not to bunch in the sumptuous fabric, pull her undeniably against him, her graceful fingers feathering over his face in a touch more delicate than a kiss. Light brushed his closed eyelids, and he opened them to the soft glow of her, everything about her indescribably beautiful to him; he realised then that he’d never been in love before, the strength of the feeling almost making him pull away. But he hadn't been able to leave her then, for all that it meant destroying her. He thought of her now, that moment and each one that followed, and he felt each of them being rewritten in his head, these two versions of things that simultaneously existed, one where he fell in love with her, though he hadn’t meant to, though she was icy and wounded and unsure, the opposite of everything he’d ever been attracted to before. Another where his hatred and the novelty of her, the challenge of seducing an inexperienced princess, powered each of their interactions, every confession, promise, moment of tenderness a lie. He grasped for the truth of the feeling she left in his chest even as he felt it fly from him, the waves surrounding him flowing over his head and swallowing him completely.</p>
  <p>She knelt on the balls of her feet in his cell, red hair untidily falling over his closed eyes, his breathing deep and even. </p>
  <p>“I know you’re awake.”</p>
  <p>His lips twitched at the corner, but his eyes when they opened were cruel.</p>
  <p>“It looks like you did learn something from our trysts after all, princess. It was hard to tell with the way you threw yourself at me. Don’t worry, I’m sure <em>Reznor</em> appreciates your inexperienced enthusiasm.”</p>
  <p>His smirk let her know the improbability of that being true; she kept her face impassive, rather than letting her hands curl into fists as they wanted to. She was familiar with this sort of dance, two animals circling each other, trading glancing blows and waiting to see who could taste blood first. Vexx was a sniper, and she’d given him everything, all her secret places and the ways to use them against her. But even against him she knew how to pretend a hit wasn’t a hit.</p>
  <p>“Jealousy doesn’t become you, Vexx.”</p>
  <p>Her face reminded him of her mother’s: sharp planes of gelid imperiousness. He felt nothing when he looked at her, not even anger, just a dark hole with jagged edges. He grinned nastily. </p>
  <p>“Don’t you wish it was jealousy, Peg’asi? Then you might have something to cling to to convince yourself you weren’t the fool you played.”</p>
  <p>“I was a fool,” she said, something there and then gone in the back of her eyes, too quickly for him to identify it even with all of his senses attuned to her. If he’d had to have guessed he would have bet it was anger. He didn’t know which of them it was directed at though.</p>
  <p>“Vexx.”</p>
  <p>He didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to know any more about her than he already did, but her gravity was inexorable. She was a planet, he a moon, a reflection.</p>
  <p>“What would you have done?” she asked. “In the alley, if the others hadn’t shown up?”</p>
  <p>The expression she wore was new to him, one he’d never seen on her face before, and unreadable. He didn’t know if they were still playing the same game when she looked at him like she was.</p>
  <p>“Would you have killed me?” she asked, watching him.</p>
  <p>He felt himself twitch beneath her gaze. <em>He might have</em>. “No.” Sweat beaded on his skin, his temples pounding.</p>
  <p>“You killed Nerissa.” The accusation was empty, without heat, spoken like the news of gravity’s existence. “You appeared to care for her the same as you did me.”</p>
  <p>He couldn’t stand the weight of her stare anymore, staring at the wall rather than her awful, distant eyes. “I guess.” ...<em>loved you.</em></p>
  <p>She looked away, a sharp movement of her head, and he watched the corner of her mouth lift humourlessly. “I’m special then? An irreplaceable fool?”</p>
  <p>“Go back to Reznor,” he said tiredly, exhausted already by her presence, scratching at his thoughts like rats trapped in a cage.</p>
  <p>Her face when she turned it back to him was even harder than before, if that was possible. He watched as she undid the tie around her waist holding her dress closed, the material falling open to reveal soft blue skin he remembered, a sliver between the open sides of her dress and the black lace of her matching underwear. The tangle in his head did nothing to suppress the tactile memory of how it had felt the first time he was allowed to feel as much of her as he wanted. His fingers twitched with the urge to touch her again and confirm the way she felt; he didn’t know why he wanted to when he hated her, something painful constricted in his chest there was no name for. </p>
  <p>“D’you want to know the way he touches me?”</p>
  <p>His mouth felt dry.</p>
  <p>“No.”</p>
  <p>He knew his face betrayed him, didn’t know if she was doing this to punish him or prove there was something between them. She shrugged her shoulders and the dress slid down her arms. She didn’t hesitate though he expected her to, her hands reaching behind herself to unhook her bra and then sliding those straps down her shoulders too. The whisper of fabric over skin wormed its way into his ears, making his skin prickle beneath his clothes, suddenly too tight. Seeing her he remembered again the feeling of holding her bare skin in his arms, the way each unsure, wanton look had once hit him, in a way he hadn’t before, the perch of each areola on her breasts making his body coil tightly in on itself. She’d never been restless the way that he was, but she was even worse at finding sleep. She’d laid awake once, carding her fingers through his hair as he slept on the bare skin of her stomach and dreamt vague happy dreams that shouldn’t have belonged to him. In the morning her soft, self-conscious smile, already awake, had seemed bigger than the world, than the sun rising through the window.</p>
  <p>His eyes were dark, but they didn’t waver from her. She brushed one hand down her arm, never taking her attention from him. She felt as embarrassed and awkward as she had the first time she’d slept with him, but she wouldn’t flinch, not with the way he was watching her. Her skin shivered beneath her touch in the cold air of the cell, nipples hardening. And then there was the look on his face, like a starving man staring at the last bit of food left out. </p>
  <p>Her face had once been much more expressive, glowing and flushed and full of feeling for him whenever they were together, not like the mask of her mother she now wore. But her nipples were hard from being exposed in front of him, her hands brushing cautiously up her stomach to the undersides of her breasts, touching herself in ways he knew she liked. He wanted to touch himself too, hard in his pants, but more than that he wanted to feel her against his hardness. Then he thought about her letting Reznor touch her this way, about the man getting to see all about her that had been his, and a growl tore from his throat. </p>
  <p><em>She was beautiful</em>. He hated her. </p>
  <p>His palms burned with the desire to feel her, chest sore with the absence of her. <em>She was a blight, should have been dead with the rest of her family</em>.</p>
  <p>He didn’t remember leaving his spot against the wall to push her to the floor, but she was beneath him, letting him bite furiously at her delicate skin, push himself against her, her legs crossed behind his back, her hands shoving his coat off his shoulders and meeting his fervour with an abandon that felt as though the world was ending.</p>
  <p>“Is this the way he touches you?” Vexx growled, his teeth sinking into her neck hard enough she wondered if he wanted to break the skin, but the sensation made her squirm and sigh beneath him. Her obvious arousal did nothing to pacify him, but she felt no fear at the way he touched her. What else could he do to her that was worse than what he’d already done?</p>
  <p>“Why do you care?” she murmured, before capturing his lips, kissing him as if she’d been drowning without him, because she had, despite all sense.</p>
  <p>Her need pulled at something in him, an undertow that couldn’t be escaped, and he felt more of himself shoving at the boundaries of who he was, trying to be closer to her, trying to be with her, so completely that no one else could ignore that they belonged to each other. There had been a time when he knew she’d thought their bond was stronger than the things standing between them, a time when even he’d questioned the extent of his loyalties, if she would truly leave everything and go with him if he tried to take her away. He’d ended that, almost effortlessly, and yet he still was left with all this heavy emotional baggage ringed around his neck, the desire to paint her body with his hand prints and bite marks, watch the play of them on her skin. Her hands threaded through his hair, clenched so tightly it hurt, though he liked the way she struggled to get closer to him when no more distance existed to cross. They’d been together like this so many times before, the familiarity of her body both startling and disarming. She didn’t move differently, touch differently, and he didn’t know why he hoped that meant she was lying. But she never had before.</p>
  <p>“How?” he demanded, pulling back as if he was in any position to pretend he’d deny her. “Tell me.” The implied ‘or I’ll stop’ didn’t frighten her.</p>
  <p>She laughed in his face, bitter and hurt, and he felt a wave of <em>something</em> sweep through him, something dark and possessive and not meant to be looked at in the light of day. She saw it, because she always did, knew even when he was her guard that he lied to her, though it had taken him most of their relationship to realise this was true and she had simply had faith in him anyway. She stilled, staring up at him, accusations playing across her face like the little spinning lantern of stars he’d had as a kid, if each of the stars thrown onto the wall had burned. He stared back, angry too. Lost.</p>
  <p>The way he looked at her made her unsure which of them had won. To first blood? She was fairly certain they were both bleeding now, and she had never learned how to fight that way anyway. To the death; to the pain. Blood was easy, replaceable. As he told her she was.</p>
  <p>“How?” Vexx asked again, drawing her attention from the inner place it had retreated to. His voice was deeper, the words less demanding in the fear she heard lurking behind them.</p>
  <p>She brushed her fingers softly down the side of his face, watching the contact. He felt himself go still and she used the moment to wind her arms around him, holding him closely, protectively. His heart was beating too rapidly in his chest at the answer, thorns in his head tearing at his thoughts so he couldn’t grasp why his body felt wrong, cold and frozen and then too hot.</p>
  <p>“He touches me like this,” she said, lips delicately brushing his skin when she spoke, and he put a name to his symptoms: terror. He had no right to her, and yet there was terror that he’d already lost her.</p>
  <p>Her arms tightened around him, the strength in her grip taking him by surprise. “<em>Don’t leave me again</em>.” He heard the words in the way she held him before she said them aloud, and wondered briefly if it was how she usually felt, divining intentions beyond what was spoken. He’d always thought she was too proud to beg, particularly after what he’d done, his skin flushing.</p>
  <p>Vexx was frozen against her, stiff and unresponsive. He was the only person left in the world who knew her, because he knew who she’d been, and he knew more intimately than most what she’d lost. She felt it when his body loosened, his arms hesitantly encircling her. Once he held her his grip tightened, desperation making him cling to her more tightly than he should have.</p>
  <p>“It’s hard to stay here with you,” he said, voice burying itself in the crook of her neck before his lips ghosted over her skin and the wounds he’d made there. He wanted to make more, and leave her a squirming sighing mess beneath him, far away from the harsh realities of their histories. He wanted the look she’d used to give him back, the one that seemed to see deeper than it had any right to. Her eyes now watched him with the wealth of all their history and a new wariness, different from the one she’d treated him to when they first met. Now he had hurt her once already, more deeply than he suspected she had thought him capable of, and he in turn knew how little she forgave, too protective of herself to know how. He’d seen it before, the way she would just shut down, and didn’t know why she was willing to let him close again. He was afraid of the answer the way he thought she might have been afraid of truly looking at him.</p>
  <p>“Try,” she said, the quiet word an indictment. He kissed her, as if that could bring back what used to be and stave off the inevitable, and then deepened it when that didn’t seem to work. He wanted her like fire does oxygen, and he felt when they both caught flame.</p>
  <p>Her hands went to his waist, undoing his pants and pushing them past his hips; she’d barely done as much before he pulled the crotch of her underwear aside, too in need of her to wait. He rubbed himself through her slick wetness and the sound she made, a breathed out phantom of a moan, made everything in him blaze higher. He positioned himself against her, listening to the sound of her breathing as he nudged his head inside; there was the familiar hitch that came from trying to adjust to his invasion, followed by her hands tightening around his arms, near bruising in their grip. </p>
  <p>Her hips canted up at him, almost against her will, trying to drag him deeper inside. His breathing was ragged, like her own, their skin sticking together. She was trying not to let loose her light, but her skin was glowing like the northern lights of Orion, this flickering ripple exuding from beneath her pores no matter how she tried to suppress it. She was fairly certain it was her whimper that did it, the noise escaping and making him realise she wanted more, needed all of him inside her. He pushed in, her toes curling as she arched into him. She’d forgotten what the size of him felt like inside her, but the pain was good, an external representation of the internal ache (tornado of knives and other sharp weaponry) she felt around him.</p>
  <p>“Vexx,” she said. He felt her tears on his skin, tried to ignore them, the prison he was half within in his mind shivering as what her tears used to mean to him bore down on it.</p>
  <p>He threaded his fingers through her hair, tightening his grip until he could feel the response in her body. He tilted her head back, baring her delicate throat to his tenuous mercy.</p>
  <p>“D’you trust me?” he asked, watching her throat flex before he leaned forward, his lips clasping on the pulse that jumped there, teeth dragging over fragile skin.</p>
  <p>She liked being beneath him like this again: the press of his body, his hands roaming over her, letting him take her away from herself. But trust was something separate than the lingering feelings she had for him, feelings part of her — most of her — hated herself for. Her eyes closed so she didn’t have to see whatever change in his expression occurred. “<em>I can’t</em>.”</p>
  <p>It wasn’t fair to be hurt by that. He sat back and used his grip on her arms to pull her upright after him, her lissome body in his lap, beneath his hands. Her eyes were still closed, but a moan slipped from between her lips at the shift of their bodies. “Do you trust me with <em>this</em>?” he asked, fingers gripping her chin, trying to ignore the way even he heard his own fear. Her eyes opened, serious and dark with her answer even before she gave it. </p>
  <p>“<b><em>I can’t</em></b>.”</p>
  <p>She kissed him again and he met her, lips moving like he was trying to convince her otherwise, even as he felt everything she’d lost running down her cheeks.</p>
  <p>They put their clothing back on in silence. He’d barely taken anything off, lacing his pants back up and watching the newly made pattern of his marks covering her body flex as she bent to the floor to scoop up her underwear. His eyes tracked her slender hands as they drew up the inside of her thighs, using the discarded black lace to wipe away their fluids leaking down her skin. He’d always liked watching her move; she did it differently when she thought she was alone, their old familiarity and her distraction creating the same effect. Her self consciousness came back when she put her dress back on, movements growing close and protective. He didn’t know what he’d see when she had to turn and face him, but he could feel her reluctance to do so.</p>
  <p>What was wrong with her that she loved him? Why couldn’t she stop? She’d felt safe with him once, seen by him. Now she felt unclean, violated, as much as she felt a fool. She knew something was wrong with him, knew that he’d loved her, but didn’t know what was real, what had been meant and what had been a manipulation. And she’d <em>let him inside her</em>. Then and now. She should’ve left the crew, gone somewhere far away where he would never be able to find her, if he’d ever even looked. Then she thought of the man who’d killed her family, down to the children, sitting on her family’s throne. She wasn’t the sort of person to let one man — even a man she couldn’t get her stupid heart to stop beating for — get in the way of what needed to be done. She would set right what she could, for the people she could still save.</p>
  <p>Her face was her mother’s again when she faced him. </p>
  <p>He searched her for chinks in her armour, but saw none. “So that’s it then?”</p>
  <p>“What were you expecting?” she asked.</p>
  <p>Silence fell between them, and he could see that she would leave, without reluctance or hesitation.</p>
  <p>“...Did you think I was using you for my own political gain when we were together?”</p>
  <p>There were windows in her eyes, though the door had already closed on what was. “Yes,” she said simply. He saw an indecipherable flicker cross her face again; there had been a time when he was sure he knew her, everything about her. It made sense that in the end, he realised this wasn’t true.</p>
  <p>He didn’t know what he was still looking for from her, but she gave him nothing as she paused before the door. He saw words, cruel ones, soft ones, explanations, but she spoke none of them before leaving. </p>
  <p>He sank back against the wall, his head in his hands, two versions of things rattling around within it, fighting for dominance. </p>
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